Читать книгу English for Life Reader Grade 9 Home Language - Elaine Ridge - Страница 9

Pre-reading
1.	“Leviathan” is an old word for a ‘large sea monster’ or whale. Those of you who are familiar with the Bible or the Koran will know the story of Jonah (Yunus) and the whale (or great fish). Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and then brought up alive on a shore so he could do important work there. In this poem the ‘monster’ is a puff-adder which is likened to the whale thats swallowed Jonah.
During reading
2.	How does the speaker invite us to sense the surprising speed with which the lizard is caught and then swallowed?

Leviathan

Douglas Livingstone

A puff-adder, khaki,

Fatter than a stocking of pus

except for its short thin tail,

obese and quick

as certain light-footed dancers

took a dozing lizard.

Scaly little monster

With delicate hands and feet

Stupidly sluggish in the sun.

Panting, true,

But lizards breathe mostly

As if their lives depended.

Gone.

Enveloped by a slack bowel.

O Jonah, to tumble to

Those sickly deadly depths,

Slick-walled, implacably black.

obese – very fat

implacably – determinedly or unchangeably

Post-reading
3.	Compare the two creatures in the poem. Which one has the speaker’s sympathy?
4. a)	There is a reason why the slow snake could catch the quick little lizard. Can you find it, in the first stanza?
b)	Explain what looks like a contradiction between “obese and quick”? In what sense was the snake quick?
5.	To what unattractive or even disgusting things is the puff-adder compared? How is it like them? (Are these metaphors or similes?)
6. a)	How is the lizard’s experience like Jonah’s? In what way is its fate different?
b)	Which two words in the last two lines tell us that this is the end for the lizard?